Issue #55: On Music Row's "Family First" Mentality

Or, I covered the ACMs red carpet and all I got was a little demoralized

By Natalie

The ~stars~ were ~out~ in the Omni Frisco ballrooms a couple weeks ago, smiling and waving and in some cases chatting their way through the ACM Awards red carpet on their way into yet another predictable country music awards show. I was tasked with covering the event for the Dallas Morning News, which was fine except for the fact that making these sorts of things seem at all interesting is like trying to draw people into C-SPAN (if C-SPAN were deeply unimportant rather than a primary document of our rapidly disintegrating nation, but I digress). 

I haven't done tons of red carpets, but I've done them enough to know how to do the dance: "How's your night going so far?" "Who are you most excited to see?" and in this case, because we were (gasp) in Texas and not Nashville, "Have you spent much time in North Texas?" (my alternative to "How do you like Dallas so far?" because, after all, most of them would not step foot in Dallas during their visit; they were confined to the suburban rot that is Frisco, Jerry Jones' enormously successful money-making scheme/the place that is sucking the lifeblood out of the city of Dallas).

It was, as I said, fine; good to get face time with people, nice to have a few compelling conversations and a useful exercise of my on-the-fly interviewing skills. It was striking, though, to see up close the machinery that is typically confined a few states away. I asked probably a dozen country singers (most of whom are not yet wildly successful; Lainey Wilson and Shaboozey are not stopping at the DMN sign, understandably) who their favorite Texas country artist was — a layup, I thought, and probably a jumping off point into a million conversations about Willie or Waylon or any number of other Texan honky-tonkers who became household names. Also not a question that I expected to be illuminating in any way — rather, a way to fill time in pleasant enough fashion.

All but two artists had the same answer: Cody Johnson, this year’s ACM Awards' most nominated Texan artist and, sometimes, Parker McCollum (also nominated). It was so surprising to me that I started clarifying, adding "from any era" in hopes of sparking a little more creativity. But the results were constant, even when I was talking to people who wear their Texas honky-tonk bonafides on their sleeve like Jake Worthington ("I've never been more inspired by our industry — guys like Cody Johnson are opening the door for guys like me," he said, before belatedly adding "Bob Wills is still the king"). I did speak with Johnson himself, who name-checked local legends like Roger Creager, Kevin Fowler and Cory Morrow. 

Thank goodness, though, for Kassi Ashton: "I spent my 18th birthday at a Josh Abbott Band show," she said. "'Oh, Tonight' [featuring a pre-fame Kacey Musgraves, for the uninitiated] had just come out. Also, I'm gonna throw it back: Cross Canadian Ragweed. Oooh baby!" It was just wildly refreshing to talk to someone who wasn't instantly thinking about protecting their precarious place within this insular, cutthroat business and currying favor with people who might have more sway (or boosting labelmates, etc.). We just talked about actual music, and it was lovely.

Of course, this all requires the disclaimer that it's a red carpet, and it's very hard to think of anything on the spot; if you've been hearing a ton about Cody Johnson (and who hasn't) he's gonna be top of mind (and of course there's nothing wrong with Cody Johnson's music, I like some of it; his politics are another thing altogether). Nor does everyone need to know about the genre’s history in order to participate in it, of course, though you’d hope maybe some of the basics would be acknowledged. The conformity just hit me, hard; it was a little demoralizing to see a thing that gives me such joy (Texas country music) reduced to a chess piece. 

It's a tiny, extremely inconsequential example of a core trait of Nashville's country music industry: its "us-against-the-world" perspective, and how that translates into a kind of blinkered, kneejerk boosterism. No matter how many streams you get or awards you win, if you're on top everyone who wants to be in your place is expected to keep cheering you on — acting like you're the underdog even when that's self-evidently untrue. "We protect our own" on steroids, an overreaction to decades of country music-as-punchline/people saying they listen to everything but country music that entails not proving those people wrong but instead leaning into the bit. The friendlier way that this gets framed is that Nashville is "like a family" — that jargon that's so often used to obscure toxic workplaces. 

We all know well who doesn't tend to get much out of that required lobbying, support, and more often than not willingness to look the other way when a member of that "family" does something offensive or harmful: almost all people of color and, to a lesser extent, many white women. Conformity is the rule of the day; aesthetic, moral, and otherwise. In that sense it is like a family, specifically a conventional, homogeneous nuclear family alienated from its community, focused on its own financial success at others' expense. 

The walls of the fortress have some cracks, though, or at least a few bridges are being built across that seemingly miles-deep moat. There were more BIPOC on that red carpet than there too often have been; very far from any kind of parity or fairness but at least an improvement, if an unsatisfying one. At Billboard's Country Power Players event, also held in North Texas two days before the ACMs, Breland presented The War and Treaty with the Groundbreaker Award (full disclosure, I wrote the accompanying story). 

"They've kind of become like family to me," he said. "This is a changing landscape in country music, and we're seeing now for the first time in a long time a lot of people that look like me on these Billboard charts, and winning awards and celebrating these amazing successes. What's important is for all of us to not just celebrate that, but participate in it by helping open the door for the next group of artists that are coming along. The War and Treaty epitomize that: Just a couple weeks ago, they invited me, Rissi Palmer, Valerie June and Dom Flemons — a group of Black country artists — out with them as their family on Celebrity Family Feud…it really does feel like a family thing. They could have brought anybody with them, but they wanted to share that spotlight." 

It was so heartening to think about the formation of a new kind of country music family; hopefully, one that won't replicate the sins of the one that inspired it — one built around rising together rather than uniting only to protect the status quo. A salute, of course, to Holly G, who has been hard at work trying to cultivate a better, more inclusive and ambitious country music community with the Black Opry and who I was lucky enough to meet (finally!) at the Billboard event, to Rissi Palmer, and to all the other people pushing with their full weight for change. You help me imagine a country community where there is room for everyone to be themselves — and maybe even listen to country music from Texas that is not by Cody Johnson :) The songs will be better for it.

Ed. Note: A previous version of this post included the phrase “circling the wagons” in the title — I hadn’t realized that that phrase is offensive to Indigenous peoples until a reader brought it to my attention. Appreciate the insight, and am sorry for using it!